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Hello Guys, This is my brand new track. I composed it in the frame of my new series, "Choose an Artwork". I shared the latest part of this series on this forum, but if you are not familiar with it, here are the details: (the winner was the third image) Choose an Artwork II.

Let me introduce my latest track! I'm interested in your opinion.

My aim is to write songs in an acoustic ballad style (no electric guitars or drums) similar to Don Mclean's Starry Night in terms of arrangement Primarily on piano and guitar (both picking and strumming). I am looking for software to assist with: 1. Recording lyrics (entered by typing) in a way that matches up with chords and melody without much difficulty. 2. Gives the options of best chords available for a given key. (ie. you can edit individual chords in a progression easily) 3. Does auto-arranging for acoustic ballad piano or guitar style. (with the more variety being better) 4. Can generate alternative melodies or similar melodic figures that I can select from. 5. Allows a VST to be imported, so it doesn't sound like rubbish while I'm composing. From my research so far, it seems that all the software that records and displays lyrics to match chords is separate from the software that does arranging and produces nice sound. If I am wrong here, I would love to know which of the advanced arranging software is lyric friendly. EZKeys seems like the best software for my needs, but I might be wrong. EZKeys suggests the best chords, has a nice VST piano, and does auto-arranging, although the variety seems limited and I can't find any info on whether you can import or create your own arrangement midi database. (seems like you have to buy the ones they have made and they are quite expensive) EZKeys doesn't have a melody generator that I could see. Melody generation seems best done by Rapid Composer, but some have suggested that Band In A Box can also do this. From my observations of BIAB it seems they are heavily focused on the jazz, rock and electronic styles which I have no interest in. My main concern with Rapid Composer is that it will produce melodies that sound too computer-generated and weird, like what I have seen in the demos on youtube. Has anyone had good success with Rapid Composer? Synfire seems like a mystery package, but one that might be helpful as I often struggle with coming up with new rhythmic and melodic ideas. The demo on youtube makes it look pretty ordinary and would love to see the workflow of someone making something awesome with it. I'm not sure how good it would be at generating alternative melodies and arrangements that fit the modern ballad style. People suggest loading it's AI database with classical music, but I don't want my music to sound 300 years old in style! Perhaps I could only upload midis of the songs styles similar to what I want to create? Reaper seems to be the best value DAW, so I would go with that. My observations of VST acoustic guitars are that all the good ones require Kontakt 5. I especially like the workflow of Strummaker IV but it seems you need to buy Kontakt 5 which is expensive. I can't find any other VST guitars that enable you to customise strumming patterns but I might be missing something out there. So it seems I will need to buy: 1. Lyrics/songwriting software which can import/export melody and chords. 2. EZkeys OR Reaper plus a good VST guitar OR Kontakt 5 with strummaker 3. BIAB, Rapid Composer OR Synfire if I want help with melody ideas. Any suggestions would be much appreciated :)

Hello everyone! Chopin says you all are pretty savvy people, and that's exactly who I'm looking for! :D So please allow me to introduce myself and tell you what an great guy Chopin is (actually, you probably already know that last part): :nod: My name is Lori and I am the Outreach Communications Specialist for StoAmigo, a personal cloud management system. We recently opened a public beta test of our product and we're giving free 5 GB StoAmigo accounts to everyone who is willing to take StoAmigo for a spin. All I ask in exchange is for any feedback you have about the system: what you like, don’t like, what you think works or doesn’t work, new ideas, etc. The account is yours to keep. You've probably heard of cloud computing before, maybe even have an account somewhere else... *ahem* BUT two of the things we're excited about at StoAmigo are our streaming quality and capabilities for music and video. Who better to offer opinions on those features than music aficionados? So even you're visiting the forum as a guest, you're welcome to give StoAmigo a try. Anyone who wants to sign up for the beta (and a free 5GB cloud storage account) can contact me at lori@stoamigo.com and I’ll send you a personal beta access code. Please mention "Young Composers" in the subject line of the email. You can also visit www.stoamigo.com if you want to find out more about us. I want to publicly thank Chopin for allowing me the opportunity to reach out to you today. I truly appreciate it. Hope to hear from you soon, and thank you in advance! Lori

Hey all, So I'm on my last year or so of undergrad school, and that means that I'll be going through the the senior courses (no more 4 hour classes!), revamping resumes, my portfolio and expanding my internet presence. I'll also be proposing my (50's suspense music here) SENIOR PROJECT! In all seriousness though, i'm really excited! I've been looking forward to getting out there and starting to work with people in the real world. But enough of my ranting, time to present you guys with my proposal for my senior project! - A working VSI with the intent on it being useable in real world mock - ups. But before I really get my hands dirty: I wanted to hear from you guys and get the YC community involved with this project. I think this would be a really cool project to hear from other people and really to network with all of you guys; many of us will be working in the same industry more or less (some of us are already making their name out there) and it would be great to get feedback from peers in the composition community. I don't expect this to be the next cinesamples, but I do intend on getting to know those guys and other companies that create this software and be able to create my own custom instrument libraries in the future. Basically I wanna know: What UI options do you think are "essential" to make a user - friendly patch? What other software instrument would you like to see come out? What are some problems that you have sometimes with VSI's? Anything else that comes to mind :) The short version of my proposal is that I'm going to make a sort of "Scary String" library using some common effects used in commercial orchestral music and some extended string articulations. If you're interested in reading more, I've opened up my Prezi presentation online, the link is below. http://prezi.com/vjt...oject-proposal/ I look forward to hearing from everyone! Happy composing! ~J